Archives

September 2013

This September, Recording turns its attention to the question of improving your studio in a variety of ways. We tackle the topics of room acoustics, monitoring, cabling, and more, in ways that you'll find handy and inspiring!

He's worked with artists like Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, George Duke, Youssou N'Dour, and Stanley Clarke, and has been a voice of reason and sanity in the often-hyped world of studio monitoring for many years; in this issue we tap into the wit and wisdom of Peter Chaikin on straightforward strategies for monitoring in a small studio.

And that's not all -- we welcome four new authors this month! LA-based engineer and performer Eleanor Goldfield brings us a practical look at maintaining your studio's cabling; Boulder-based engineer/producer John McVey with takeaway tips on getting the best sound from a session that has problems; California-based acoustician Bruce Black talks about the tips and tools for soundproofing rooms; and from Arizona, Jess Repanshek shows us how a musician turned his backyard shed into a fantastic studio. And long-absent acoustics/construction contributor Matt Seiler returns with a lovely DIY piece on using drywall as a practical acoustical wall treatment.

This issue features reviews on new monitors from Emotiva Pro, a first look at Drawmer's new monitor controller, MOTU's latest audio interface, an usual mic from Ashman Acoustics, a new preamp from Sontronics, and FXpansion's latest effects plug-in, the haunting and lovely Bloom... not to mention first looks at Avid Pro Tools 11 and Apple Logic Pro X!

All this plus our regular features, an in-depth look at equalization in Eric Ferguson's Recording Fundamentals, Readers' Tapes with Marty Peters, and more. If you're trying to get the best sound and the best performance out of your studio, you can't afford to miss the September Recording!

Pick it up now on the newsstand... and so you get your next issue early (and save on cost), why not hit the big red SUBSCRIBE NOW button on this page and have RECORDING delivered to your door each month?

Reviews

Ribbon tweeters and an unusual cabinet design combine to deliver an impressive punch.

Back in our February 2013 issue, Mike Metlay introduced us to Emotiva Pro when he looked at the company's airmotiv 4 and airmotiv 6 powere......Expand

Ribbon tweeters and an unusual cabinet design combine to deliver an impressive punch.

Back in our February 2013 issue, Mike Metlay introduced us to Emotiva Pro when he looked at the company's airmotiv 4 and airmotiv 6 powered studio monitors. He found them to have a "nicely balanced and strong sound" and to "offer a considerable value for your speaker buying dollar". At $349 and $699 per pair ($449 per pair for the middle-of-the-line airmotiv 5 that wasn't reviewed), it's hard to argue.

This month we step up into Emotiva Pro's flagship Stealth line, as we look at the new Stealth 8.

Emotiva was founded a decade ago in Franklin, TN, with a home hi-fi/audiophile product line. Emotiva Pro is a new division and is focused on the recording studio market. The reason you don't see them at your local retailers is that part of the company's business model is to sell direct from their website, complete with free shipping. By cutting out distributors and stores, Emotiva can pass that savings on to the customer....

This tabletop FireWire/USB interface offers plenty of high-quality I/O and a powerful DSP engine for mixing, monitoring, and effects processing.

MOTU's new Track16 is unique in its layout and onboard controls; it's a far cry......Expand

This tabletop FireWire/USB interface offers plenty of high-quality I/O and a powerful DSP engine for mixing, monitoring, and effects processing.

MOTU's new Track16 is unique in its layout and onboard controls; it's a far cry from the company's venerable and well-respected line of rack-style interfaces like the UltraLite-mk3 (reviewed March 2011) and the 4pre (reviewed December 2012). But peek inside and you're met with the hardware that made MOTU famous: a full-on DSP engine that provides complete flexibility in signal routing, great-quality effects, all manner of useful software utilities, simple-to-use programmability, standalone operation... all with impeccable sound quality.

The Track16 offers up to 16 inputs and 16 outputs, 8 each of analog and digital, not to mention various virtual signal paths used by your DAW. It's a 24-bit interface that offers A/D and D/A operation at up to 192 kHz; the optical digital connectors can act as stereo optical S/PDIF (Toslink), or as 8-channel ADAT optical (sample rates of 44.1 or 48 kHz) or 4-channel SMUX (sample rates of 88.2 or 96 kHz), with the input and output set to differing formats if needed....

An intriguing new mic that harkens back to well-respected vintage design principles.

Ashman Acoustics is a new company started by microphone designer Matt Ashman. Before branching out on his own, Matt studied at the feet of ......Expand

An intriguing new mic that harkens back to well-respected vintage design principles.

Ashman Acoustics is a new company started by microphone designer Matt Ashman. Before branching out on his own, Matt studied at the feet of AEA's Wes Dooley, where he say he learned the "kung fu of acoustical design."

According to the company website, Ashman Acoustics' goal is "to help make good acoustical design affordable." The company's first offering is the SOM50, and it is quite unique in both its looks and its sound.

The SOM50 is a small-diaphragm condenser microphone with a 6 mm pressure-mode electret capsule. It ships in matched pairs and comes with a pair of mic clips in a plastic carrying case.

The mic is hand-built in Seattle, WA, and its body is milled from a solid piece of anodized aircraft aluminum. It measures 5" long with 1.375" as its widest diameter. It gets its unusual looks from design principles rooted in acoustics and inspired by the Neumann M50 microphone....

A British audio firm best known for its microphones offers an updated and flexible preamp design.

Sontronics is British company known for its line of British-designed and Asian-built microphones that are among some of the mo......Expand

A British audio firm best known for its microphones offers an updated and flexible preamp design.

Sontronics is British company known for its line of British-designed and Asian-built microphones that are among some of the most unique looking in the industry, with an art-deco meets sci-fi modern appearance. In June 2010 we looked at Sontronics' multi-pattern Orpheus large-diaphragm condenser and the active ribbon Sigma, and in our July 2013 issue we reviewed its latest dynamic guitar cabinet microphone, the Halo.

The newest member of the Sontronics family is the Sonora 2, a dual-channel, solid-state microphone preamp which is both designed and built in the UK. Contrary to what the number 2 suggests, this is Sontronics' third microphone preamp. Along with the original Sonora, the company also has the Chimera, a single-channel valve/solid-state hybrid preamp. Both of those models were designed in the UK and built in Portugal...

Well known for its signal processors, Drawmer makes a splash with its first control-room monitoring product.

Drawmer is a British company known for its MXPro line of gates, compressors and de-essers and its 1960s Series of m......Expand

Well known for its signal processors, Drawmer makes a splash with its first control-room monitoring product.

Drawmer is a British company known for its MXPro line of gates, compressors and de-essers and its 1960s Series of mic preamps, equalizers and compressors, as well as its boutique signature series of compressors-including one of the few multiband hardware compressors on the market. The MC2.1 is its first monitor controller.

Monitor control used to be done from the master section of a traditional recording console, typically involving power amps driving the studio's speakers. Nowadays a monitor controller lives between your sound card or D/A converter's outputs and your monitor speakers, which are usually of the active variety.

The monitor controller can be active or passive, a simple device with a single volume knob and a single set of inputs and outputs, or a complex routing box that allows multiple audio sources to be auditioned through multiple speaker configurations with built-in 5.1 handling, bass management, and more. As per its "2.1" designation, Drawmer's new MC2.1 is a stereo model that also handles a sub, with 3 source choices and 3 speaker destinations....

Not one but two of the major players in the DAW game have received massive updates in recent weeks. Here's a sneak peek at what to look for.

It's been about four years since Logic had a major (point-0) update, and anticipati......Expand

Not one but two of the major players in the DAW game have received massive updates in recent weeks. Here's a sneak peek at what to look for.

It's been about four years since Logic had a major (point-0) update, and anticipation amongst Logic users has been at a fever pitch. Which direction would Apple take? Would Logic continue to lead the pack in power and complexity -- "Logic Xtreme"? Or would we get a simplified workflow that would entice newbies but leave power users wanting -- "GarageBand Pro"? Back and forth they went... And now X is out -- so which is it?...

Bloom is a new effects plug-in from FXpansion, makers of the Geist loop/rhythm processor (reviewed April 2011), the DCAM: Synth Squad modeling synthesizers (Reviewed September 2010), and the BFD drum library and groove sequencer (most recently reviewed August 2009 for version 2). We could call Bloom a delay... much in the same way one could call the Eiffel Tower a "building". It's technically accurate, but something of the charm is lost!

Bloom contains a delay line with a feedback loop and three types of delay emulation; a reverb called the Diffusion Network; a pair of 3-band equalizers; highpass and lowpass filters; and an Effect Chain that contains four separate sub-effects. These combine for a powerful combination of modulated delay effects, and their power is multiplied by easy and intuitive systems for automation and realtime control....

When audio was shiny and new, a huge amount of the early fundamental research on audio transducers and transmission was performed by the telephone company. It seemed a natural extension of their main business;......Expand

Thank Ma Bell.

When audio was shiny and new, a huge amount of the early fundamental research on audio transducers and transmission was performed by the telephone company. It seemed a natural extension of their main business; in the 1930s, both sound films and electrical disc recording were in great part developed and marketed by Western Electric, the manufacturing division of Ma Bell.

With these markets exploding and with so much about electrical transmission, transducers, and human hearing still unknown, it seemed just good business sense for Bell Laboratories to put a huge amount of work into basic research in the field....

Interviews

From his first studio dates with Stevie Wonder to his work promoting a new generation of accurate reference monitors, Peter Chaikin has a lot to teach our readers about speakers and how they interact with listening environments. Listen and learn!Expand

From his first studio dates with Stevie Wonder to his work promoting a new generation of accurate reference monitors, Peter Chaikin has a lot to teach our readers about speakers and how they interact with listening environments. Listen and learn!

Peter Chaikin is the Senior Manager for Recording and Broadcast Marketing at JBL Professional. He's written for us before and his views on the ups and downs of monitoring in the small studio are both fun and easy to understand.

Peter joined us by phone from JBL's facility in Northridge, CA, where we started with a bit of monitoring history and background, then took the time machine into the present, and wound up with a tantalizing glimpse at the future....

An engineer/producer has a lot to contend with, from inexperienced clients to difficult rooms. Here's a selection of tips and tricks to help get past some common production obstacles.

For this issue on improving your studio results, I'd like to share some tips on how to use what you have to get better sounds and better recordings. Sometimes a bit of thinking and planning can make a huge difference. It's not always about the equipment or the studio, it can be about how you use what's at your disposal-and managing a session can help to get the best out of the artist(s) you're recording.

The room in which you are recording may not be the greatest recording space on the planet! Your home studio, or that of the artist(s) you're recording, may be a basement, a loft, a garage, or one or more rooms in a house (see Sven-Erik Seaholm's article "Recording The Band" in our August 2013 issue for some great strategies in this case). The equipment you're using may not be the greatest, and the band may be inexperienced and in need of guidance... but it's what you have and where you are.

No matter where you are, there are always decisions you'll have to make about how to record. The differences between this room you're in today and the best rooms on the planet may be vast, but some of the decisions you make might not be so different, and could mean the difference between a good sounding project and a not-so-good sounding one...

Don't throw away mic or instrument cables that go flaky... fix them and add to both your bank account and your store of self-confidence.

You plug in a microphone and "check." Nothing. You make sure the pre is on, and set to ......Expand

Don't throw away mic or instrument cables that go flaky... fix them and add to both your bank account and your store of self-confidence.

You plug in a microphone and "check." Nothing. You make sure the pre is on, and set to an appropriate level, even crank it up a little. Nothing. You make sure that Pro Tools is looking at the right input or that you haven't patched something wrong. Nothing.

You finally grab a new XLR and plug it in. Ahhhhhh, there's the problem -- a crap cable. So you fling the bum cable to the side, and move on.

Now, many engineers with home studios will let that bad cable fester there until they finally throw it away and eventually replace it. Before you do the same thing, keep reading....

So you've been put on notice-the sound from your studio or music room is bothering others and you've been told it has to stop. It could be family members, it could be neighbors, it could be the local gendarmerie doing the talking, but the message is clear and noncompliance is not an option.

But what if you make your living with sound? Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place! You can't shut down, but you have to fix the problems. The good news is that there are things you can do to reduce or eliminate sound leakage and improve the acoustic isolation of your room, and many of those fixes are simple and easy to do....

Some worthwhile solutions to room issues come in a box from a store, but others can be put in place before you even move in. Here's how.

Home-based recording, by its very nature, means that you're working within the preexist......Expand

Some worthwhile solutions to room issues come in a box from a store, but others can be put in place before you even move in. Here's how.

Home-based recording, by its very nature, means that you're working within the preexisting architectural elements inside your home or apartment to make and capture your music. The traditional problem is that the designers and builders of your place didn't exactly have acoustic purity in mind when they built it. And so there are some common challenges, especially the taming of low-frequency buildup, that we all face when trying to retrofit corrective strategies to produce decent-sounding recordings.

There are a ton of products on the market which aim at helping you curb some of these issues, with spot treatments. They're not a broadband approach, they only work where they've been placed, and-let's face it-we're often guessing where to put the stuff.

On the upside, traditional drywall walls have one thing going for them: they're essentially diaphramatic absorbers that work on the low-end frequencies. Intentional oversimplification: As sound energy hits the walls, the sound waves either pass through the walls into the spaces behind, or (frequency dependent) they get reflected back into your space....

A quick look at how a small building in a backyard got turned into a productive recording and mixing space.

So it is 100+ degrees Fahrenheit, and I am driving across town to Northern Phoenix to spend some time in this guy's ......Expand

A quick look at how a small building in a backyard got turned into a productive recording and mixing space.

So it is 100+ degrees Fahrenheit, and I am driving across town to Northern Phoenix to spend some time in this guy's backyard shed. Well, by now it is a bit more than just a shed. Patrick Hogg of the band Asimov (sludged.com or facebook.com/asimovband) bought a house that came with a separate 14' x 17' structure, and over the past year he has transformed that into an affordable yet comprehensive mixing and tracking studio. Here's how he did it....

Last month we learned what goes into an equalizer and why they're important... now we get to have fun with them!

Equalization is the most common form of audio signal processing. Used to adjust tone, eq can manipulate the rel......Expand

Last month we learned what goes into an equalizer and why they're important... now we get to have fun with them!

Equalization is the most common form of audio signal processing. Used to adjust tone, eq can manipulate the relative loudness between various frequency components in an audio signal. Troublesome frequencies can be reduced or eliminated, while desired frequencies can be boosted and highlighted. Previously, this column introduced and investigated various equalizer types. This month, we will look at workflows, myths, tips, and tricks....